Sumter Community Holds City Wide Prayer Day

Sumter, SC (WLTX) - Community members around town filled up a local theater for to pray for the youth.

Normally, a packed movie theater on Saturday is nothing out of the ordinary. But it's not a motion picture that had this auditorium filled to capacity.

"I heard of the shooting at the movie theatre when the new Batman movie came out and God spoke to me then for a prayer revival, a gathering of the people," Bishop T.L. Penny with Shubach Ministries said.

Many from the Sumter community came out for the "If My People City Wide Prayer Day" rally at the Beacon theatre. The goal is to influence young people to stop the violence.

"It's something about the cry of the people that spreads abroad," she said. "I actually feel the hearts of these children and they could very well be mine. I look at them and I'm like Lord give them a chance to live and to grow strong and to miss that bullet."

Penny has lived in Sumter for 20 years. She believes if the city doesn't pull together, they too could end up in situations like Aurora and Newtown.

"What we're hearing on the news -- these major massacres and tragedies -- if we don't do something now to bring our community together it's going to hit home in even a bigger way," Penny said.

Although the event only happened in Sumter, Penny said a church in her native Brooklyn saw the flier and decided to hold the same event today. She hopes it catches on.

"The gameplan is that it becomes contagious and that it spreads across the country. And that we have just struck a match and that it will light all over America," she said.

And many in Sumter are hoping for a sequel to this box office smash. Bishop Penny is hoping to talk with city leaders to make February 2 an official citywide day of prayer to stop the violence.